The present invention relates to altering component colors of art work associated with a drawing stroke on an electronic document.
In modern drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator.RTM., produced by Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif., graphical patterns are made available to a user to enhance the aesthetics of a document. In these programs, the user is able to select a graphical pattern for a drawing the user is creating, and then manually place individual copies of the selected graphical pattern wherever desired on the drawing being created. For example, the user may desire to place a border around a drawing. The creation of the border would require the user to select a graphical pattern and then individually place multiple copies of the pattern around the periphery of the drawing. To save the user time in individually placing the graphical patterns so as to form the border or other shape, certain programs support a process known as tiling for placing graphical patterns or other shapes such that graphically pleasing borders can be produced. As discussed in U.S. application Ser. No. 08/580,472, filed on Dec. 28, 1995, and entitled "AUTOMATIC GRAPHICAL PATTERN PLACEMENT", hereby incorporated by reference, a path on an electronic document is sketched by the user and a graphical pattern is selected before the graphical pattern is automatically placed along the path by a programmed computer such that the graphical pattern follows the orientation and curvature of the path. In this manner, graphically pleasing borders or shapes can be produced with only a minimal amount of user time.
Certain programs support additional enhancements on the border generation process such as changing a stroke color associated with the shape of the border. Other extensions support complex strokes which, instead of being a line, may be an art work which has been distorted to follow an outline of the shape, or a tile which has been replicated along the outline of the shape. The complex strokes are often referred to as "art work strokes", while the art work that has been distorted along the shape or that composes the tile that has been replicated along the shape is called a "base art work" of the stroke.